Comments made on 2 August 2017 at “How Driverless Cars Will Change Our Lives“
I recall Buffett saying during a Squawkbox session around the time of last year’s annual meeting that for the first time in the 30 odd years that he had been privy to detailed insurance data that the incidence of single driver accidents had increased… without any actual data to back up his hypothesis, he suggested the cause may be the proliferation of the smart phone… at the time I agreed to myself and thought “yes, you can’t go for a 10 min drive in your car without seeing at least one person at lights distracted by their phone”…
More recently I have been reflecting that it seems at lights almost half of all drivers are distracted by devices, as well as (more worrying) while driving in traffic and on occasions the drivers I have witnessed have been in heavy vehicles (trucks)…
I personally think that once the technology is proven to be safe, autonomous vehicle acceptance in major metropolitan areas will rapid and profound – and may well be driven in part by regulation and enforcement, as well as preference…
As someone who is not particularly status driven – I recently replaced my 15 year old camry with a 10 year old station wagon (because I appreciate the depreciation rate to reliability ratio of these cars) – when I thought about an alternative being a safe, highly efficient (appears at your door within 5 minutes of ordering through your app), and clean vehicular pod (no steering wheel) I suddenly had no desire to waste space in my home to park a vehicle or the logistical hassles of maintaining one…
I honestly think that the biggest obstacle to overcome my envisioned future is the status symbol value of one’s own vehicle…
But I do wonder whether younger Australians will quickly get over that – afterall, they certainly won’t have the big home in which to park a flashy vehicle because, well, they can’t afford one, can they? Certainly not both!
Comment made 19 July 2019 at “The Autonomous Age is Still Some Way Off“
I do believe that the “need” for this is growing sharply indeed. Two years ago in a conversation around this topic I would say that it is becoming necessary because people are becoming less able to keep their hands off of their devices, and that in one round trip pre or post school drop off/pick up I would see at least one driver totally distracted on their phone. Then a year ago I changed that to at almost every traffic light I would notice at least 1. Now I have to say that at every light I see many! It’s essentially an epidemic…
I do agree also on your point that many of these safety concerns will be met by lower order automation and other regulatory responses such as road cameras to detect device usage. But I think this will go much further – I think that fatigue detection software will be adapted fully to detect distraction, and may well become compulsory in cars in the years ahead (I did some research on potential investments in this space but most were either a part of larger companies – eg Caterpillar – or were not planning public listing any time soon).
I had a brief chat with a delivery driver a month back who had some rather frightening stories – in one case he saw a crash at lights where the young woman on P plates didn’t even break as she went through a red light and straight into a collision! It didn’t surprise me given the level of distraction I have been observing personally… And I mentioned the school periods because I want to make the point that it is not just young drivers – I think that middle-aged drivers up to their 60s are some of the most distracted! Perhaps Facebook will need to link in with maps to detect fast motion and automatically close down (like many car Bluetooth systems will not allow fiddling when moving)…
So I believe that over the next decade stronger and stronger regulation will be needed to stop distraction. It’s a far, far bigger issue than drink driving ever was. And ultimately people will be required to decide – get off your device or drive… A lot people will not want to be detached from their devices, but also will not want to make use of mass public transport… so the demand for autonomous is enormous, I believe… (and this trade-off will help people get over the “control” issues that they might have with “letting go of the wheel”).. it’s not just cheap money that’s “driving” the investment in this area… So money will continue to be thrown at even if there is a “paradigm” shift in the availability of financing, and I think this will happen at a speed that will surprise many skeptics… Mind you, like most major technological advancements, being able to make money by investing in the theme, well that’s something else altogether… I do like the anti-distraction device theme over the next decade
© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2019
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